"...OK this stay won't be quite as short as I'd hoped, that is a lot to get through if you want any sort of thorough guidance, though I have faith in your abilities and suspect there won't be that much guiding for me to do. Overall, what ratio are you splitting between 'things that would be useful in the war' or 'evacuation plan'? I figured out tactical-range teleportation for myself, but writing long explanations in cipher is tedious, I'll write up the principles as best as I can here and share them unless you've also got teleportation by now. It's a good step forward for both."

"Since you handily defeated Thauron on your own we've been focused on winning. We don't have teleportation sorted yet."

"OK. I'll get those notes to you as soon as possible, teleportation is useful. Sauron seemed to be magic resistant, though I didn't exactly collect a lot of data to figure out exactly how. I'm not sure if he has spell resistance - some beings in my plane have it, spells just fail to affect them. Sometimes one gets through, it depends on the skill of the caster and the level of spell resistance. Or he might just be resistant to fire, and cold, and lightning, and acid - creatures have those too, but not usually all four at once. The third option is that he actually was seriously affected by my spells but pretended not to be and successfully tricked me into using weapons against him instead. Those seemed to work a bit better.

"Also he's an illusionist and a very good one so I'm reluctant to believe we actually defeated him until we can get a lot more evidence."

"And would be additional reason to believe that he didn't give accurate impressions of what was effective against him. Maybe we can ask Huan how Maiar interact with your magic system."

"That is a good thought, also if he and Celegorm are willing to spend a couple weeks on it it might be good to take him up to the island and see if he can tell how injured Sauron was? This seems like it might fall within the purview of a maia of Oromë. And possibly track him down if he's nearby, if I actually managed to injure him badly it might be worth the time if we have an opportunity to finish the job...

"Also, is there someone here who is good at recognizing faces? Someone I can show the people we saved, if they had friends or family that would want to know..."

"Yes, I'll schedule a meeting for that purpose. And I cannot imagine Celegorm and Huan have any project more urgent than hunting down Thauron."

"Excellent. Shall I describe the fight with Sauron in case it reveals any capabilities of his you weren't aware of? Then I think I'll go skim these notes, write up what I can on teleportation, and catch some sleep, and if you think you can arrange the meeting tomorrow then I could leave with Celegorm and Huan right after that."

Blink. "If you like, but no one's expecting you to."

"Uh. Assuming I did injure Sauron pretty badly I'd probably be helpful in finishing him. Assuming I barely inconvenienced him I can teleport the three of us away safely, or at least Celegorm and myself I don't know if it will work on Huan yet. Or do you mean it doesn't have to be tomorrow? I suppose with the amount of time it's already been a few more days probably won't matter, so I guess you have a point there. My continued presence here makes people understandably uncomfortable, so I'd rather not linger but if tracking down Sauron isn't urgent and it would help for me to spend more time on the notes that seems worth it."

"How long ago was the fight?"

"Um... About a month? Three days before you got my letter informing you of it."

"Then yes, it'd be more valuable to have a few more days of spell advising."

"Very well. A recounting of the fight with Sauron now, or is getting teleportation notes to you faster the priority?"

"Whatever's convenient."

Then Malak will give an account of the battle, skimming over the repetitive bits and leaving out the killings of orcs apart from the ones who were in the dungeons. They make no mention of their ability to steal energy from the dead.

Nod. "You should check with Huan if your inferences were correct. And teleportation?"

"Can try to describe it. Might be easier to do with time on paper, but I'll give it my best shot now while you can ask questions as soon as they come up... Mine is largely cribbed off of my shadow-stepping because it's easier for me to fit it in my head that way. More efficient teleportation - less energy cost, it would also probably help with range - would go through the Astral plane instead of the plane of shadows so I'd suggest you try developing it that way from the start."

And they launch into an explanation, osanwë'ing the sensation of teleporting - if Curufin's learned basic divination then he can detect magic while they demonstrate, for an outside view. Curufin has plenty of questions, and Malak answers them more confidently than before - they paid more attention to the development process this time for precisely this reason.

A few hours later it seems about as explained as it's going to get and Malak heads back to their room to read over Curufin's notes on the elven spell development. Unless Celegorm is currently around and they can test things with Huan.

He is not. They can depart with lots and lots of fairly exhaustive notes.

Which they will read, taking notes of their own until they fall asleep. And in the morning they will read some more and wow, Curufin's thorough, but they are done by noon and ask their unnecessary guards whether it would be rude to osanwë Curufin now and if so is there another way to get slotted into his schedule?

They'll get an appointment as quick as possible, but yes, don't osanwë people at range unless it's an emergency, think what running a city would be like if everyone did that.

Good to know! Malak waits.

And is escorted to an appointment!

They don't say anything to ruin the illusion that guarding them would serve any purpose at all if they were malicious.

"You've made a really solid start! Your magical energy capacity - oh, tangent, you should probably come up with a Quenya word for that, something less clunky than 'magical energy', I've only been using that phrase because the spell didn't autotranslate - anyways, your capacities seem to be about normal for beginners, maybe a little higher than usual but not significantly so. You've been making decent progress at destruction and enhancement magic, I'm really impressed with how far you've gotten with shapeshifting but it's using way more energy than it should, I have some thoughts on where the efficiency could be improved..."

"Go on -"

And they do! There are a few other areas that could use some steering that Malak can provide - the elves also have not made very much progress in the areas outside of Malak's expertise, but hopefully they will start to make inroads there once they have a bit more practice with magic in general. They talk for hours - Curufin is much easier to get along with during a technical discussion.